The other day I was tweaking the Webpop blog by adding a new "Link" post type, for posting quick links to external sites with just a small comment.

Allan, our designer, had included the type in his comp for the blog, but it was a detail that we left behind for the launch of our blog.

While the change was pretty straight forward, just adding a new kind of entry for the blog, hooking it up with our templates and tweaking the css a bit, it sure wasn't something I would like to be doing directly on a live site with people watching.

Versions in Webpop make it possible to create an exact copy of the whole directory structure that makes up the design of a website. Each version has it's own url where you can always preview the page or compare with other versions. Creating a new version is instantaneous and takes up no extra storage space.

So I created a "Links" version, editing my templates while previewing and verifying the result on the version-url. Once satisfied with the result, I activated the version and put my changes live.

Design versions is a small feature, but it makes it really easy to go in and tweak a live site safely. It's the kind of feature you just can't do without once you've gotten used to it.